Clethra Sixteen Candles

Hundreds of Fragrant White Candles on a Compact Shrub! This easy-care native plant puts up with just about anything Nature dishes out! For my money, there are few shrubs to beat our native Summersweet in quality and quantity of blooms, fragrance, fall color, and sheer endurance. And if you liked Summersweet before, just wait until you see 'Sixteen Candles'! The rangy, flop-all-over-the-place habit of yesterday's Clethras is gone. Instead, you've got a compact, incredibly floriferous shrub with the same power to attract butterflies and bees into the garden, send up carefree color in mid to late summer, and then deliver a radiant encore in autumn with leaves of burnished gold!Just 30 inches tall and 42 inches wide at maturity, this vigorous shrub begins sending up 4- to 6-inch spikes of pure white blooms in midsummer. The flowers continue for several weeks, perfuming the sunny to partly shady garden and serving as a magnet to all the bees and butterflies in the neighborhood. The lustrous dark green foliage is a nice backdrop for the bright blooms, and the neat habit makes this Clethra as appropriate for a formal planting as for the carefree mixed border and shrub planting.When the cool weather sets in, the leaves turn a rich yellow, keeping 'Sixteen Candles' in the spotlight well into autumn. Selected by the renowned plantsman Michael Dirr at the University of Georgia, 'Sixteen Candles' is certain to become a classic. Hardy just about everywhere in the contiguous United States, its compact habit and ultra-floriferous nature make it suitable as a foundation planting, accent, border standout, or even a specimen! Our 2-year-old shrubs are ready to grow in any moist, well-drained soil receiving full sun to partial shade. Zones 3-9.


Use the Search on the upper right to find more Clethra Sixteen Candles products.